COULD this be it? Could this be a further nail in the coffin of my increasingly begrudging relationship with the increasingly bloated Facebook?

New co-owner of the soon to be relaunched “MySpace”, mega star and all-around good guy Justin Timberlake, took to Twitter this morning to unveil a 2 minute teaser of what his team of designers and developers have been working on. Talk about an effective way to reach almost 14 million fans and potential early adopters in one swift move!

Check out the video for yourself below.

While the teaser, posted on quality video website “Vimeo” (bonus points for that move BTW) is only a sneak peek, we are exposed to enough screens to see glimpses of features we’ve already seen in other smaller niche social networks launched in the past like the initial release of “Virb”, “We Are Hunted” & “Pinterest”. Sites like these share a few things in common, namely sporting clean, professionally designed user interfaces, and happily lacking all the noisy, bolted on shared games and applications crap.

What we can surmise from what is shown is the following:

You’ll be able to sign up initially using either existing Twitter &/or Facebook accounts and have the option of importing at least some of your content from these top social services into the new MySpace.

Status updates, photos and more will be posted in much the same format as is done on Pinterest now.

There appears to be the opportunity to create “Mixes” involving song playlists and photos from parties and events.

The new site will be pitched to music artists, photographers, designers and other creative folk, AND to all their fans.

All of these points come together to present a rather tasty offering with a lot of potential. There is, however, always going to be a number of hurdles ahead for a launch, a relaunch in fact, like this.

How will a switch to the new beast be pulled off without pissing off MySpace’s current 25 million active users? Considering the massive uproar and backlash that happens every time Facebook tweak the way they serve up their pages, this will likely be a bumpy road.

How do you successfully relaunch a brand that is largely disrespected, even hated, by millions that jumped across to Facebook not more than 5 years ago?

Perhaps Timberlake and Co’s timing is perfect. Facebook’s popularity is apparently on the wane, the site’s recent IPO proved to be somewhat of a flop and with the opportunity to capture disgruntled and bored Facebookers looking for a more focused social experience at an all time high, why wouldn’t a slicker, sexier, more polished MySpace start calling for beta testers?

I jumped at the chance to throw my name on the pending invitees list, and now you can too. If you’re a fan of clean, functional design, married with a distinctive musical tilt, then rock on over to https://new.myspace.com/ and register your email address now.

I think you’ll continue to see a deluge of more niche focussed social media networks as Facebook continues to own/dominate the “all encompassing, all singing, all dancing” (also read: grossly bloated) social app space.

MySpace, which already has a healthy existing music-loving user base has the potential to own the music social space – a space which Facebook has failed dismally to cater to.

If only the rest of the world could intelligently & democratically vote in leaders the likes of a Trudeau 🇨🇦 or Ardern 🇳🇿...
PS. Another fantastic segment from you @hamishNews. Congrats mate! 👍🏼
PPS. All the best for your pending arrival @jacindaardern! 🍼 twitter.com/hamishnews/sta…